Jesus' Tomb Garden for Easter

This Easter Garden idea has been all over the place so much it is hard to know where it all began. In case you haven't seen it,


What You'll Need...

• Wide shallow planter dish
• Potting soil
• Grass Seed
• Small pebbles
• 1 large rock
• 1 small flower pot for the tomb
• Sticks and string for 3 crosses

Cover shallow planter with potting soil. Bury a small flower pot in the dirt with the opening showing. 

Plant grass seed in the potting soil to cover the spots that do not have rocks, and water. 

Add some small pebbles for a path to the “tomb."  Use a larger stone or a planter base to cover the doorway.

Keep in a sunny place, seeds should sprout within about 7-14 days so you’ll want to plan ahead a little! Create 3 crosses using sticks and string and display in the grassy area.

Marbled Eggs

Today we tried a new technique for dying eggs. I have seen this done on several blogs this year.

First take crayons and shave the wax with a grater or food processor. Boil your eggs and while they are still very hot, roll them in the colored wax shavings.

Now dye as usual. Any areas not covered by the wax will let the dye through.
It makes a marbled effect.

Easter Week-Art...123...I Can Make Prints!...Digging In with Deep Grooves

Carve some deep grooves into a foam tray to make a print that looks like the twisting, turning tunnels of an anthill.

Use a roller to roll the paint on the styrofoam. The whole print is a block print.

Make some paper Easter Eggs.

Fringe some paper with cuts three-quarters down a strip of green paper to make some grass

to hide the eggs in.

Now ants can be added.

The Easter Egg hunt.

Easter Week: Science: Eggs, Eggs, Everywhere, Part Seven: Hard Shells vs. Soft Shells and Egg Shapes

We are finding so many ways to sort and graph our eggs. This time we looked at which one have soft shells and which have hard shells. We were able to make the generalizations that bird and insect eggs tend to have hard shells while reptile and amphibian eggs have soft shells. Amphibians tend to have a jelly-like substance surrround the eggs.

We also talked about the different shapes of the eggs. The elongated shape of the eggs help the parent to turn the eggs while incubating them to keep them warm. The pear-shaped eggs laid by birds like the murre, pivot in a circle so that it is less apt to roll. The eggs that are not turned during incubation tend to be more rounded.

We talked about how shape can affect how an object moves. We set up a ramp and rolled a round ball down it and saw that it rolled fairly straight, perhaps curving slightly toward the end of its roll, but generally straight.

Then we rolled the plastic eggs down the ramp and could see that it distinctly curved in its path.

We then talked about how birds turn their eggs a dozen times an hour and that the oval shape makes it easier for them to turn the eggs. If the egg does roll, it rolls in a circular pattern, just like the plastic egg did on their ramp, making it head back to its starting point.

I then asked them which way it curved and they rolled more eggs and concluded that it rolled toward it's more pointed end. We talked about how the Murre uses no nest materals by lays its one egg on the ledge of a cliff near the ocean. The eggs has an even more elongaged oval with a thinner pointed end than the chicken egg we are used to seeing. Because it is so thin on its end, it rolls in a sharper circle and this keeps it from rolling off the cliff. Murre Eggs are interesting in another way as well. They come in many colors and patterns so that the parent bird can recognize their own egg among all the eggs on the cliff that don't have nests to keep them seperate.



Easter Week: English

Uppercase-Lowercase Matching Game



Quentin complained that he never gets to fill the plastic eggs with candy, so I used the idea of Uppercase/Lowercase matching I had seen at the hills and made a game of it. I wrote letters both in Uppercase and...



lowercase and hid the separated halves.

He had to find them and match them and then show them to me. If he was right (which he always was), he got to put a piece of candy inside and then put it aside to hide for his brothers.

The colors helped to make sure he was always was successful, he was able to fill eggs, hide them and see his brothers enjoy a Easter treat, which was shared with him, of course. Easy learning. All fun.

1+1+1=1 shows another way to use those plastic eggs to help reading skills by using word families.

Introduction to Algebra with Peeps

After seeing Dirt Under My Nails doing a Peeps math activity, I just had to do it as well.

Marshmallow Peeps come 10 in a package. Each Peep is 2 inches long. How long will one package of Peeps be if each Peep is lined up in a row with 1/2 inch between them? How long would 2 packages of peeps be if each Peep is lined up in a row with 1/2 inch between them? How long will 75 individual Peeps be if they are lined up in a row with 1/2 inch between them? Can you write a rule to determine how long any number of Peeps would be lined up in a row with 1/2 inch between them? Remember to show all your work, use math representation and as much math language as you can.

It was pretty easy for James and Sam to figure out that 10 Peeps x 2 inches = 20 inches and that 9 spaces x 1/2 inch = 4 1/2 inches so that 1 PACKAGE = 24 1/2 inches


But, when you get to more complicated problems, it became easier to work it out as an algebraic equation.
They determined after doing different amounts of packages of Peeps that the spaces between the Peeps was always the number of Peeps minus 1 and that if the spaces were 1/2 inch spaces, the equation could be written like this, with N being the number of Peeps.
2N + [(N-1)(.5)]

And with this simple beginning algebraic formula, they could figure out any number of Peeps.

Easter Week: Math

For a warm-up you can have your child place a jellybean in each egg carton cup.

He can count them while he is putting them in or after he has put them all in, or both.
You can ask him how much does he think it would be if he added one more to each cup. Whether or not he gives the right answer, let him do it and discover what it is. Do this as many times as he likes.

For the next activity have him fill plastic Easter egg with 1-10 jellybeans.
While he is putting them in, have him count how many he is putting in and have him write that first number down on a blank sheet of paper. Then have him open the egg up, being careful not to drop the jellybeans out, and count how many jellybeans have fallen in one side of the cup. Have him write that number down as the second numeral of a subtraction problem. Then have him count how many have fallen on the other side of the egg and use that number as the answer numeral of the equation.

Then have him close the egg up again and shake them. When he opens the egg up this time have him count how many jellybeans have fallen in one side of the cup. Have him write that number down as the first numeral of an addition equation. Then have him count how many have fallen on the other side of the egg and use that number as the second numeral of the equation. Then have him count the total, and write down the answer the the equation.

Then have him close up the egg again, and see if a new equation comes up for this same number of jellybeans total. How many different equations can he come up with in the same egg?

This process is a fun way for children to learn "fact families," or what problems can be made from three numbers.He can then go on to another egg, with a new fact family to explore. This is also practice in conservation in number, or the concept that 3 + 4 is the same as 4 + 3.

Quentin also discovered that he could write the equation backwards, such as 7=4+3 or 1=0+1.

"Students may be skilled at addition, yet not understand in what situations that skill might be applied. This failure to extrapolate is most apparent when students are asked to solve word problems. They may have the technical ability to solve problems when numbers are provided, but be lost when asked to extract the same numbers from words."

Another way you can use jellybeans is to make up math word problems with pictures. These pictures come from a book called Instant Math Storymats, but you could sketch your own.

You can take turns making up stories that involve counting, adding, subtracting...
and skills like multiplication and division are simple for even a young child...


if they are part of a story, like dividing fruit represented by colorful jellybeans between two story friends.
Quentin particularly likes stories in which he plays one of the characters.

"To discover for themselves the workings of (multiplication) students have to think; this thinking is the point of all our questions and, in the end, is the point of all mathematics."

Both quotes are from Mathematics is a Way of Thinking, by Robert Baratta-Lorton.
This is reposted from March 24, 2010.

Eggs, Eggs Everywhere, Part Six: What Happens Inside An Egg?

This week we looked at what is inside a chicken egg.

Quentin cracked an egg inside a bowl and the boys looked at the different parts, and touched them, feeling the different textures. They are quite familiar with eggs because of helping me out in the kitchen so much, but they had never really looked closely at one. (Sorry I didn't get a shot until after they were done with it and by that time the yolk had broken and spread.)

We washed our hands after to protect ourselves from possible salmonella germs.

I found this worksheet that shows the parts of the egg and I thought it would be a nice idea to make a flat, layered model of it. So, I got out craft foam, paper and yarn, and we cut and glued and learned new names for the parts.

I continue to be surprised at how much individuality the boys can bring to their projects. Quentin opted for orange construction paper rather than the yellow craft foam I had imagined them using. He also decided to draw his chalazae, the string-like fibers that hold the yolk in the middle of the egg, rather than use yarn.

James decided to use this whispy yarn we had.

Alex used some yellow yarn and seperated the fibers a little.
They all used cut-outs of the terms to label their eggs.

Alex's

James'

Quentin's

We also looked at egg development. When Katie was in first grade we did a duck hatching project, but the project is quite a commitment and I didn't have that time this spring. I would like to so it again in the future, but for now, to help them understand what was going on inside the egg, I found this page  that shows the stages of development of the chicken (last page).

It is supposed to be made into a wheel with paper plates,

but we are going to make booklets instead,

but then again they may each decide to do it slightly differently.